Czech LifePrague boasts unrivalled collection of chamber pots and toilets at new
museum

A rich, and certainly idiosyncratic, museum has joined Prague’s list of
attractions. The collection devoted to, let’s say answering the call of
nature, is the result of a Czech couple’s trawling of junk shops, antique
stores and auction houses for chamber pots and toilets. The result ranges
from the most humble clay pot to those designed and used by presidents and
emperors.

Photo: Martina Schneibergová
Since the start of the year, Prague has a new addition to its panoply of
museums. And the subject matter should be familiar to all of us. Yes,
it’s the history of chamber pots and toilets.

The director of the private collection in Prague 2’s Vyšehradská
Street, Renata Sedlácková, says the collection is the biggest in the
world. “At the moment we have around 2,000 thousand exhibits on show. Of
these, around 1,700 are chamber pots, around 120 are sit down toilets and
water closet chests with the rest being curiosities, postcards, catalogues,
and other smaller items. We started buying first of all in the Czech
Republic, for instance when we were travelling around by car and stopped
off at junk shops and antique stores and asked if they had chamber pots and
so on.

“Gradually as time went on and as things changed, we started a lot to
use Internet sales sites which allowed us to get these items from around
the whole world. Today we have chamber pots, mainly from Britain, but also
from the United States, from Australia and, of course, items from Asia. It
is the biggest collection in the world. We know of two similar museums in
the world, both of which we have visited. One is in New Delhi, India, and
the other is in the Spanish town of Ciudad Rodrigo.”

The collection started by chance back in 2003 when the family was carrying
out reconstruction work on an old fortified building on the southern
outskirts of Prague and uncovered an old stone toilet. Daughter Tereza
takes up the story. “My dad found an old house from the 9th century and
he reconstructed it. And he found an old toilet in a wall and he realized
that he could reconstruct it. So he made a really good replica which is
here now because the exhibition is not now in the old house but here in the
centre of Prague. ”

With interest sparked the collection quickly snowballed. Tereza continues:
“After that it was a sort of joke on behalf of my parents. My mother gave
my father a chamber pot as a Christmas or birthday present and after we
collected around 100 pieces, my dad realized that we should exhibit them
because two pieces were valuable antiques and that is how the collection
started. ”

Photo: Martina Schneibergová
The downstairs collection of the museum is devoted to an impressive
collection of chamber pots in all its shapes and sizes. The oldest, a
pretty plain clay piece, dates from the 15th century and was bought from a
Dutch collector. |But there was an explosion of designs and models from the
seventeenth and eighteenth with clay being replaced by porcelain and even
silver as the raw material.

Some of the French designs have a particular history. |There are, for
example, the so called bordelu chamber pots. Their history goes back to the
era of Louis the fourteenth and the ban on women absenting themselves for
the call of nature when in church or on other court occasions. Some decided
to take a sauce bowl to such events just in case the need arose and the
curious sauce bowl shaped chamber pot began to be produced as a result.

Another French special chamber pot began to be produced at the same time
with newly married couples but not the tradition purpose in mind. Tereza
again: “We have a collection from France and it’s called chamber pots
for marriage. It was a tradition that these chamber pots were not used but
they were made for the married couple so that they could eat sweets and
other delicacies from these chamber pots. It was a tradition. ” Eerily
these pots usually have an eye painted in the bottom and a message for the
newly-weds on the side.

Portraits of politicians were, especially in the nineteenth century,
pointed on the bottom of chamber pots as well to express the buyers’
views. One example at the museum portrays former British finance minister
and Liberal prime minister William Ewart Gladstone. The pot in question was
presumably owned by a Conservative or Tory. Small pots were produced during
the Second World War portrayed Adolf Hitler for a similarly unflattering
purpose.

Photo: Martina Schneibergová
There are also chamber pots from hotels and those used by the famous
European cruise lines, such as the White Star Line, made infamous by the
sinking of the Titanic. The cruise line pots were used more for sea
sickness than the conventional purpose since flushing toilets were
obviously part of the luxury shipping experience.

The museum also boasts a series of celebrity chamber pots. Perhaps the
most prized was produced in Britain as part of a porcelain collection for
the former French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte who had already been packed
off to exile at St. Helena for disturbing the peace of Europe again at the
battle of Waterloo. Tereza explains the circumstances of its acquisition.
“After a few months, my mother read a little article in the newspaper
that there was an auction to be held in London and that there was a chamber
pot from Napoleon Bonaparte. And she decided that she should go there and
she did. And that is how we have one of the most specific and rarest
chamber pots in the world. ”

Unfortunately, the chamber pot in question and the imperial posterior
never became close. The British censor charged with checking everything to
do with Napoleon took a dislike to the design on the pot because it looked
like a victory garland and banned its departure to the lonely South
Atlantic island. History does not tell how the former emperor dealt with
the loss.

The chamber pot of a Chinese emperor and one pot that graced the White
House during the era of US president Abraham Lincoln are also on show. The
latter was offloaded by the wife of former president Harry Truman to a long
serving member of the White House household when she was carrying a
makeover of the premises.

Photo: Martina Schneibergová
Toilets take pride of place on the floor above with models varying from
the travelling coach toilet, first flush toilets without mains water
supply, and the sort of toilets that we would be familiar with from the
mid-nineteenth century. Most examples are from Britain, reflecting the fact
that the country was the global leader in toilet technology at the time and
exported its innovation to the four corners of the globe.

The history of one Czech toilet has a particular twist. It comes from the
site of an apartment bloc originally sited on Prague’s Národní Třída
which was demolished to make way for the metro entrance built there. The
owners’ saved the toilet and took it away with them to their new
accommodation. With the metro entrance now demolished in its turn for an
office and shopping complex, the toilet has finally ended up a couple of
kilometers away from its original site at the museum.

Renata Sedlácková continues with the story of another of the exhibits:
“We have the first chemical toilet from the United States. It basically
looks like a metal barrel with wooden boards and base. The barrel had a
metal interior in which some antiseptic mix was put in, most often chlorine
or lime, which smelt a lot. And a pipe was attached, a bit like the pipes
you have for heating stoves, and it was put through the wall so that the
smell was taken out of the room. This type of toilet was mostly used where
there was no possibility of using water to flush and so for hygiene reasons
the chemical mix was used instead. ”

Photo: Martina Schneibergová
Toilet paper and toilet chains and handles also have their place in the
collection with the latter providing some assistance if gremlins got into
the toilet technology. “We have a collection of toilet handles. They are
made from wood, iron or porcelain. What is interesting is that the plumbers
wrote their numbers and names [and addresses] so this was in a way the
first contact at hand for people who had problems with their toilets
because they weren’t used to using water closets yet.”

It’s probably too early to say whether the museum is flushed with
success. Renata Sedlácková says she’s hoping to attract a mix of locals
and tourists. A cautionary word perhaps, the entrance fee amounts to more
than spending a penny, or few crowns, but the facilities on show are
perhaps unrivalled in Europe and the world.